Ciarán Ó Duibhín

This is a software keyboard layout intended for use under
Windows 2000/XP/Vista, with keyboards engraved in the US manner
(e.g. # is engraved on shift/3). It is simple to install, and extends the
normal "US" soft layout — even further than the "US-International" soft layout
supplied with Windows — to facilitate convenient keying of typographical
characters, and of the accented characters required for Irish Gaelic
(including dotted consonants), Scottish Gaelic, Manx Gaelic, Welsh and
Esperanto, as well as characters required for occasional foreign
words.

• Are you using a Windows keyboard engraved in the UK
manner? (e.g. £ on shift/3) Go here.
• Are you using Windows 95/98/ME? Sorry, I can't help, but look here anyway.
• For a comparison of software keyboard layouts for Gaelic under
Windows, go to the table here.

What you can key with this layout

In compliance with the ISO/IEC 9995 standard, no keying
requires simultaneous depression of more than two keys, other than the Ctrl and
Alt assignments, for which standard-compliant deadkey alternatives are
provided..

Deadkey assignments

The layout, when installed, will give:

acute accent on a,e,i,o,u,w,y,A,E,I,O,U,W,Y using \ as a
deadkey

grave accent on a,e,i,o,u,w,y,A,E,I,O,U,W,Y using ` as a
deadkey

circumflex accent on
a,e,i,o,u,w,y,c,g,h,j,s,A,E,I,O,U,W,Y,C,G,H,J,S using ^ as a deadkey

diaeresis accent on a,e,i,o,u,w,y,A,E,I,O,U,W,Y using | as
a deadkey

tilde accent on a,n,o,A,N,O using ~ as a deadkey

dot-over accent on b,c,d,f,g,m,p,s,t,B,C,D,F,G,M,P,S,T
using \ as a deadkey

saucer-over accent on u,U using ~ as a deadkey

cedilla under c,C using ~ as a deadkey

If any of the characters \ ` ^ | ~ is required to be input, just
press the key once followed by the space bar.

Pressing a deadkey followed by a character to which it does not apply (e.g.
\ followed by q) will result in the two-character sequence, e.g. \q.

Ctrl and Alt assignments

The layout uses the Ctrl and Alt keys to type some other characters, as
follows. In case you have to use an application which reserves Ctrl and Alt
keyings, deadkey alternatives are provided.

broken vertical bar

Ctrl and Alt and `

or

\ then `

euro sign

Ctrl and Alt and 4

` then 4

double left quote

Ctrl and Alt and 2

` then 2

double right quote

Ctrl and Alt and 3

` then 3

en-dash

Ctrl and Alt and -

` then -

em-dash

Ctrl and Alt and =

` then =

single left quote

Ctrl and Alt and ;

` then ;

single right quote

Ctrl and Alt and '

` then '

bullet

Ctrl and Alt and ,

` then ,

ellipsis

Ctrl and Alt and .

` then .

Note that some Irish Gaelic fonts may separately encode long-r ($027C), long-s
($017F), long-s-dot ($1E9B), 7-agus ($204A). This layout provides the following
keyings for this encoding:

long-r

Ctrl and Alt and r

or

` then r

long-s

Ctrl and Alt and s

` then s

long-s-dot

\ then Ctrl and Alt and s

` then S

7-agus

Ctrl and Alt and 7

` then 7

However, separate encoding for these four symbols is discouraged,
and it is suggested that you use a font which will display them as the images
of lowercase-r, lowercase-s, lowercase-s-dot and ampersand respectively.

To install the "US Ireland Extended" keyboard layout (Windows XP)

For handling typed input, your computer uses terms like "English (United
States)" — these are known as "locales" and they pair a language with a
region. We will not be changing your present locale;
your region will stay the same, and (perhaps surprisingly) so will your
language. The reason is that we don't want to make your computer unsuitable for
inputting English, and we won't have to.

Keyboard Layout

But under a locale, different keyboard layouts are allowed. Under
the "English (United States)" locale, your present layout is likely to be
called "US". We will be changing to a keyboard layout called "US Ireland
Extended" . It will be very easy for you to change back and forward between"US
Ireland Extended" and your present layout — though we don't expect you will
need to.

What to do

1. Download the file gaelicus.zip and unzip the
contents to any convenient folder.

2. Double-click on setup.exe to install the "US Ireland Extended" layout.
(If you omitted to unzip in step 1, but just double-clicked setup.exe inside
the zip file, you may get an error that "gaelicus.dll" is not found.) Click
the Close button when complete. You can then delete the things you copied to
the folder in step 1.

3. Go to Start/Control Panel/Regional and Language Options/Languages
tab/Details button. This will pop up the "Text Services and Input Languages"
window.

4. Under the "Settings" tab you will see your current locale and
keyboard layout under "Default input language", probably as "English
(United States) — US". The same information is repeated further down in
"Installed services": your locale "English (United States)" at the top
and then, under "Keyboard", your keyboard layout,"US". To change
your keyboard layout, click the Add button to popup the "Add Input Languages"
window.

5. You will see your locale again in the box labelled "Input
language"; leave it unchanged — e.g. English (United States). Click on
"Keyboard layout/IME". Choose "US Ireland Extended" from the dropdown list,
and click the OK button to close the "Add Input Languages" window and return to
the "Text Services and Input Languages" window.

6. Go back up to "Default input language" and choose the line combining your
locale and "US Ireland Extended" from the dropdown box. Click OK to leave the
"Text Services and Input Languages" window, and leave the cascade of control
panels.

To deactivate the "US Ireland Extended" layout without uninstalling
it, return to the "Text Services and Input Languages" window, go to "Default
Input Language" panel, and select the line combining your locale with the
original layout, e.g. "US". To go a step further, go to the "Installed
Services" panel of the "Text Services and Input Languages" window, select each
appearance of "US Ireland Extended" in the panel, and click the Remove button.
To uninstall the "US Ireland Extended" keyboard from the machine, either
run setup.exe again, selecting the "Remove US Ireland Extended" option; or use
Control Panel/Add or Remove Programs.

Fonts

This layout is intended for use with Unicode fonts, which includes
all fonts normally used in Windows 2000/XP/Vista. However, some Unicode fonts
may still not contain all the characters referenced, but you will easily find
others which do.

This layout is not optimal for use with 8-bit fonts, which were
designed for older versions of Windows. If it is so used, dotted consonants,
accented w, accented y except for ýÿÝ, circumflexed consonants, saucered u may
be rendered in a different (Unicode) font, such as Arial. I do not know of any
layout for this situation.